On the evolution of English as a written or spoken language.

I've heard that English has a vocabulary that's roughly twice as large as those of other European languages, and that this is due to the fact that English has adopted very many words from other languages (notably Latin) and anglicized them. So for a great many concepts there exist at least two words in English: a word with an Anglo-Saxon root, and one with a Latin root. The anglicized Latin words are often the posher ones.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Does anyone know how to pronounce "ghoti" in English?

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

nwr (and everyone else who responded to the ghoti question),I know "ghoti" is just a funny example of the quirky pronunciation rules of the English language.On a side note, now that we're on the subject of pronouncing the "gh" combination, I'd like to use this stage to tell every English-speaker how to pronounce the name Van Gogh. It's not, as a lot of you seem to think, "van goff", with "van" pronounced like the word used to denote a small bus-like vehicle, and "goff" ending in an f-sound. The name literally means "from [the German town of] Gogh".The Dutch word "van" in this context translates as "from". "Van" is pronounced with an a-sound roughly like that in the British pronunciation of "dance", but a little shorter."Gogh" is pronounced, in Dutch at least, as if you have almost ingested an insect which is now clinging tightly to your epiglottis and which you are desperately trying to expel from your vocal apparatus. Both g's have a distinctly guttural quality to them, and the h plays no role worth mentioning.If this didn't make things clear, it has at least in all probability cleared some throats.

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science." - Charles Darwin.

Take the shortness of the north, combine it with the a-sound of the south, and by Jove, you've got it.

That's fine by me.

What an odd suggestion. Next they'll be telling us we evolved from animals. Tsk!Edited by Parasomnium, : setting quote attribution right